This invention relates to a clean room which has no use for a machine compartment or an inlet or outlet duct.
In the conventional clean room, a machine cubicle is installed as closely juxtaposed to an airtight main room, an air-conditioner is disposed inside the machine cubicle and, where the air circulation inside the airtight main room is of a vertical flow type, a ceiling provided with filters of high performance and a grated floor are interconnected with air inlet and outlet ducts, so that the air inside the airtight main room is circulated by means of the air-conditioner and cleaned by passage through the filters. The aforementioned air-conditioner may be any of the various types such as, for example, the type using an air blower exclusively, the type using both an air blower and a heat exchanger, and the type using a humidifier in addition to the two devices mentioned above.
The conventional clean room described above suffers from complexity of construction because it necessitates installation of facilities and devices attendant on the air-conditioner and entails numerous jobs and various sorts of labor in the distribution of pipes and ducts. Moreover, this construction consumes much time. The total space for the clean room is required to allow a space for occupation by the machine cubicle and, therefore, is liable to be larger than is otherwise sufficient.
The clean rooms now used in various industries, in terms of required cleanliness of interior air, range widely from a high level to a low level. The clean rooms used in highly technological industries engaging in assemblage of semiconductors and cultivation of microorganisms and bacteria are required to meet as high cleanliness as Class 1, whereas those used in the industries devoted to cleaning of dust-free garments and packaging of foodstuffs are only required to meet cleanliness of the level of Class 10,000 and are not expected to provide such high cleanliness as normally prevalent in the highly technological industries. The clean rooms used in special industries and expected to provide high cleanliness are primarily aimed at enhancing the quality of products and, therefore, are required to tolerate the aforementioned drawbacks inherent in the conventional clean room construction. For the clean rooms used in ordinary industries which are satisfied with low degrees of cleanliness, the conventional construction is not suitable. In recent years, the desirability of developing a clean room which is constructed inexpensively and quickly in a small space and is readily disassembled has come to find growing recognition.